The Wii U is from 2012 but the homebrew scene is surprisingly active and the toolchain (devkitPro) is well-maintained nowadays. At least that is my impression after developing some homebrew myself.
The interesting parts: cross-compiling C++ with devkitPro, using SDL2 on a console target with basically no documentation and debugging on real hardware without a proper debugger. Most of the resources you'd normally reach for just don't exist for this platform, so a lot of it was reading source code and trial and error.
Came across this while reading about Austria's recent push for backdoor access in messengers.
The post makes a fairly grounded argument against it, touching on implications for encryption and long-term risk.
Might be relevant given similar discussions elsewhere.
Open-source software is often described as “free as in freedom.” But does that mean total freedom, even when it’s used for things like mass surveillance, AI-driven discrimination, or worse?
Most open-source licenses don’t care how the software is used. That’s great for innovation, but it also means developers have no say when their work is used in ways they find unethical. The Ethical Open License (EOL) is an attempt to rethink that. It keeps the collaborative nature of open source but explicitly prohibits certain applications, such as autonomous weapons, exploitation networks, and mass surveillance.
Of course, this raises a lot of questions:
- Does restricting unethical use break the philosophy of open source?
- Who decides what’s “ethical” in the first place?
- Could something like this even be enforced in practice?
This is more of an experiment than a finalized solution, but it’s an important conversation worth having.
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